As an undeclared candidate, Fred Thompson hasn't been in debates and doesn't have the immediate pressure that his rivals face of having to take actual stands on issues. But one page in his back story suggests issues are, well, not such a big deal to him.
Conservative news outlet CBN did the digging and found that in 1996, Thompson wanted the Republican convention to do away with the party platform. "It's the most useless device I've ever heard of," he told a Memphis paper in April. In August, a week before the convention, the AP described Thompson as "a pro-choice defender in a party with an anti-abortion tilt," and quoted the senator:
(Thompson) said the party must avoid distracting issues and focus on electing Bob Dole as president. "We need to concentrate on what brings us together and not what divides us."
At MyDD, Jonathan Singer writes:
The last thing a candidate who appears to stand for nothing needs is the news that in his past he wanted to get rid of his party's platform altogether, preferring his party to instead stand for nothing -- or at least not admit to the American public that it stood for something.
And as damaging as the fact that Thompson in effect argued that the Republican Party shouldn't admit to standing for anything in particular might be to his campaign this cycle, only slightly less problematic are the reports that he was pro-choice and that he wanted the issue of abortion to be effectively excised from the GOP.
An undeclared candidate has the appeal of an empty glass: people can fill it with whatever they want. Anyone else remember the boomlets for Colin Powell in 1995, or Lee Iacocca in 1986-87? Fred Thompson is far more likely to actually enter the race, but once he does, Republican caucus-goers are likely to demand more concrete answers on issues than "let's not have a platform."
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